MicroStrategy, a provider of business intelligence (BI) software, today announced the general availability of MicroStrategy 9.3, the new release of tits core platform.

MicroStrategy 9.3 includes dozens of new capabilities and improvements to MicroStrategy's data discovery software, Visual Insight; increased support for advanced analytics from 'R' - an open source language for predictive analysis; and improved connectivity to Hadoop. In addition, MicroStrategy 9.3 delivers a high speed "Google-like" search experience and introduces a new administration product, MicroStrategy System Manager, for automating manual, multi-step processes.

MicroStrategy Visual Insight 9.3 includes new features that make data exploration and dashboard-building simple and fast. Three new visualizations - density maps, image layouts, and network diagrams - combined with a repertoire of 300+ analytical functions allow foranalysis of data stored in any type of data source: relational databases, multi-dimensional databases, Hadoop distributions, Web Services, and personal data stores, such as Excel files.

MicroStrategy 9.3 includes the ability to unlock business insights stored in Apache Hadoop and SAP HANA data sources. MicroStrategy 9.3 lets business users build reports, perform analysis, and conduct visual exploration without expertise in either technology. The MicroStrategy 9.3 platform includes a Hive Thrift connector for Apache Hadoopas well as a new connector for SAP HANA. Using MicroStrategy's MultiSource Option and In-memory technology, organizations can merge Hadoop and SAP HANA data with other data sources, resulting in high-performance data analysis across multiple data sets.

MicroStrategy 9.3 expands its analytical function repertoire with an additional 5,000+ computations available within "R" open source project, the most widely used statistical computing language. Companies can create business KPI's using the full computational strength of "R" and then apply those computations on their Big Data using MicroStrategy's reports and dashboards.

MicroStrategy 9.3 delivers a high speed "Google-like" search experience that lets business people find answers quickly. In enterprises with diverse deployments, there can be thousands of reports and dashboards that contain answers to innumerable business questions. The challenge is enabling any business user to find the report or dashboard that contains the answers he wants, without having to open countless reports. MicroStrategy's new search engine solves this problem by providing business people with an easy search capability that immediately identifies all reports and dashboards that contain the answers they need. MicroStrategy's new search feature also lets users create new reports by auto-completing search entries for the user, thus speeding up and simplifying the process.

MicroStrategy 9.3 also introduces an innovative, new administration product, MicroStrategy System Manager, for automating the many manual, multi-step processes required to manage a BI ecosystem. For instance, MicroStrategy System Manager is able to automate the migration of BI application changes from the development and testing environments into the production environment. It can also automate the incremental refreshes of cached data, as well as execute large-scale scheduled report distributions as soon as new data is available. MicroStrategy System Manager, the first of its kind in the BI market space, saves BI administration teams thousands of hours of manual effort, provides better performance for users, and significantly reduces administrative costs.

"With the general availability of 9.3, MicroStrategy is demonstrating its commitment to leading the business analytics industry into its next generation," said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy's chief operating officer, in a statement. "Building on more than 20 years of success in developing an industrial-strength BI foundation, MicroStrategy is keenly focused now on extending that foundation with much greater capabilities in advanced visualizations, data discovery, business user self-service, speed-to-answer, Cloud deployment and Mobile apps. Collectively, these new dimensions bring BI to new levels of value for businesses."